


this home is home, and all that i need

by citadelofswords



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Fairy Tale Style, Fix-It, M/M, True Love's Kiss, some mentions of death and violence and stuff but it's a kid's story so nothing is too graphic, some spoilers for c/w finale but it's a fix it so eh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 19:48:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13818216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: Once upon a time, at some point not too long ago, there was a young hero-in-training who dreamed of one day being able to reach the stars.(a story told to aria's kids about their favorite uncle)





	this home is home, and all that i need

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangequark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangequark/gifts).



> whoa, kales, posting two fics in a week? who ARE you?
> 
> shut up, it's alex's birthday, this idea wouldn't leave me alone, so happy birthday to the best larry a kid could ask for <3 
> 
> title from always gold by radical face

_ Once upon a time, at some point not too long ago, there was a young hero-in-training who dreamed of one day being able to reach the stars. _

_ This hero did not yet know he was a hero. Nor did he know exactly how he was going to reach the stars. He spent his earliest memories in classes that seemed to repeat, day in and day out, learning the same things over and over and over again.  _

_ Not that he knew this. _

_ Now this hero had a neon flannel that would shift colors seemingly with a mind of its own. This was not a flannel that was necessarily coveted by anyone in particular. I only note it because then it’ll be easier to pick him out of a crowd. It was a really, really cool flannel. _

_ One day, this hero figured out that there was a way that he could escape his school. And so he spent days and days hatching a plan that would allow him to flee, to drop out and shoot for the stars instead. _

_ And one day, the opportunity for him to leave arose. There was an opening and he took it, fleeing into the night and hopping a shuttle off-world, away from the school and his classmates and the planet where it rained more often than it didn’t. _

_ And so our hero found himself on a planet with no sun, no cred to his name, but our hero pulled his neon flannel around himself and set off in search of work. For our hero was a bit of a magician— he could use his mind to make machines do whatever he wanted them to do. That had been what all his training was for, to make him into the most powerful magician in the world. _

_ But he had ended his training too soon, and sometimes his magic went awry. Sometimes things turned back on him. That, however, is a story for later. _

_ The hero found himself a crew to work with— a pop star with a voice like an angel and a bubbly personality who immediately became his closest friend; a noblefish exiled from their home with a short temper and a soft smile the hero could tease out with the right joke; and a pilot, a robot who had stood up one day and left their job to fly their own ship instead of parking everyone else’s, searching for the secret of their sentience. They became the hero’s family as they took job after job, facing down megacorps and pirates and any other kind of baddie you can imagine. _

_ Our hero spent most of his time using his magic on security systems so the noblefish and the pilot could break into facilities, and normally everything went pretty smoothly. One time, while taking a security system down, the hero turned to find a man from security with him in his mind. In order to get him to avoid raising an alarm the hero did something a little unexpected— he decided to convince the man in his mind that he, the hero, was part of security himself. _

_ Except the hero underestimated the power of his magic, and something amazing happened as he walked away. He wouldn’t know exactly what he had done for a long while, not until he and his family were trying to flee the planet with no sun and its cruel executive, a leader who was filled with Righteousness. _

_ The hero, sitting in the cockpit, was interrupted from his thoughts on how to defeat the planet’s security by a voice that sounded much like his own, and when he turned around he found himself face to face with... himself. But it wasn’t him. It was a man who looked very much like his mirror, but he was not looking at himself. He knew that. _

_ But the man— oh, the man was so young, so new to the world, almost a boy if not for how he had a man's face and mind. He didn’t know better. He didn’t know how to be anyone but the hero. For when the hero had cast his magic over the man in security he had accidentally made him into this new man, who believed that he was the hero. Such are the dangers of magic.  _

_ And the hero’s family, well, they weren’t able to tell the difference. So when the man spoke with the hero’s mouth, they were none the wiser. And when the man told the hero he intended to kill him and take his place, well, no one else knew. Only the hero could wrestle control back.  _

_ And so he ventured deep into the forest of his mind, battling monsters and running from armies, until he arrived at the shores of an ocean, where he saw the man relaxing on the beach with the executive— and it turned out the hero’s mind was just a little more cluttered than he’d previously believed. _

_ But there was no time to deal with that. The hero and the man would just have to learn to deal with each other, as they were traveling to another world, trying to escape the executive. It took them some time, and careful maneuvering, but slowly their tactical avoidance of each other became a dance as they realized the benefits of being inseparable - literally. _

_ Then, on the other world, the hero and his family walked right into a trap. A terrible monster rose over the horizon and seemed to block out the entire sun. The hero had never been one for true heroics, and in fact, at times, didn’t believe himself a hero, not like the noblefish or the popstar he called his family. But he was reckless and brave, and so he scrambled up into the chest of the monster and tried to rip out its beating heart. _

_ Now the hero, in his journey on this distant world, had already made battle with many who wanted to stop him from discovering the truth of his heritage, and thus was already badly wounded when he climbed into the monster.  _

_ The monster tried to work itself into the hero, but just as suddenly the man appeared next to him. Gone was the cheery, eerie twin mask of the man who had tried to kill him; this man's face was twisted in fear and anger as he yelled at the hero, dragging him back and spitting fiery insults at the monster as he forced the hero to leap from the monster’s chest so he could be recovered and cared for. _

_ (The hero would later remember very little of this, having fallen into a stupor in the belly of the beast, waking up a week later with the noblefish hovering uncertainly over him. The hero would not be able to explain to them how he was able to survive being shot and also torn into by a monster using magic, but so it went.) _

_ The noblefish told him how the pilot had managed to lock the monster in a pocket world (for the pilot, despite being a robot, had been a powerful magician themself) and so they were safe, for the moment; yet the noblefish was summoned home and the pilot had been lost on the hero’s homeworld, and so the hero found himself without his family for the first time in years. He threw himself into studying the monster, figuring out where its weak points were and hitting it where it counted. The boy helped where he could, but there was little you could do without a body of your own, and oftentimes he was truly powerless to help. _

_ The hero received word that the monster had returned from the pocket it had been locked in by the pilot and he knew he couldn’t just sit back and watch. He would have to help, despite his limited training. But the monster was now even more powerful than before, and the man paced anxiously, chewing on his lower lip, until he made up his mind that the only thing he could do was provide a distraction of sorts— and then he found something else, something terrifying, in the mind of the hero, and he shook the shoulder of the hero and said that he was gonna go take care of it, and then he did, and he was lost. _

_ And the hero— well. The hero was truly alone for the first time in a long time. _

_ There was more— more that happened, more terrible costs to pay for victory, and finally the hero received word that the monster had fallen into a star and been burned and was well and truly dead. But he already knew that, because he could feel it. Or rather, his body could feel it. The hero couldn’t feel much of anything at that point. _

_ Now when the monster fell into the fire, what happened was the young hero fell into a deep slumber. But his body continued to move of its own volition. A piece of the monster had been lodged in him and made him move without his knowledge. And so it was that the hero slept, deep in the shadows of his own mind, while someone else used his voice to brush off his family and continue to pursue the goals of the monster, even though the monster was no longer alive to see them, even though the hero was still doing everything to eradicate every trace of the monster from the world. _

_ Oh, yes, the monster was dead. Of that there was no doubt, no doubt at all. The noblefish had seen to that, seemingly at the cost of their own life. The monster would no longer terrorize the people. The piece of the monster still in the young hero just proved a touch too strong for him to break the hold on his own. And so he fell into slumber, and his body moved still, and his family believed him alive and well but distant, pulling away from them. And they were hurting, and they had no idea what they could do to bring him back. _

_ But there was enough time for one more miracle. One more magical moment. For you see, our hero was still wearing his neon flannel, and it kept him safe. It made him visible. And that was enough for our lost friend, the man in the hero's mind. _

_ What? No one’s ever truly gone. Usually they’ve just lost their way and they need someone to guide them home. _

_ The man was scared. More scared than he’d ever been. He’d never faced anything like the monster before, and he’d been lost in the darkness for so long… but his hero, our hero, needed his help. So he squared his shoulders and pulled some talismans from the dark to help guide his way. A crown of laurel leaves, a whip of pure neon energy, a pair of reflective sunglasses, and a familiar neon flannel that smelled like home. These he used as sword and shield, pushing his way through the dark until he found the sleeping hero behind a door not unlike the ones in the hero’s ship, hanging suspended in the shadows.  _

_ The hero lay across a couch not unlike the one in the lounge of his ship, but he was not sprawled the way he normally was. Rather he lay as though dead, too still, too quiet. For a long moment the terror of being too late was almost too much for the boy to bear. But our hero was not dead, merely asleep. The boy sat at his side and shielded him from the shadows and agonized over what he could do. _

_ But the shadows persisted. The hero’s body was overdoing itself without the hero to stop it for food or rest, and everything started to crumble around the man and his hero. In desperation, the man shouted, pleaded for the hero to wake up, to make everything right. But the hero could not hear him— the curse he was under was so potent it had spread darkness into his very veins, consuming him. _

_ The man resolved himself to protect the hero with his very last. In one more act of desperation, he leaned over to press his lips to those of the hero’s, remembering an old tale of true love’s kiss waking the sleeping prince. _

_ For a moment, there was nothing. And then there was a sound like a sigh, and the darkness receded, and the man found himself kneeling over the hero in a room not unlike the lounge of the hero’s ship, and the hero himself drew in a deep, gasping breath as his eyes fluttered open. _

_ Sometimes those true love’s kiss stories are real. _

_ The monster was gone. It was nothing more than a bad dream. The hero’s body collapsed against his desk, and inside his head the hero let out a yell of delight and tackled the man to the floor (for, the last time they had seen each other the man had disappeared without a trace, and the hero had been terrified that he had been consumed by the monster.)  _

_ But they were there. They were alive. And the hero took the face of the man— his savior— his  _ hero _ — in his hands and kissed him again, and again, with lips so warm and alive it was all they could manage to cling to each other, whisperings words of joy and thanks and love to each other. _

_ The hero woke slowly from his slumber, but his mind was blissfully free of the monster’s influence, and as he called up his family once again, apologies on his tongue, he felt his savior settle down in the back of his mind, something missing slotting back into place, and he smiled to himself. _

_ And you know what they did then? _

_ Mmhm. They lived happily ever after. _

**Author's Note:**

> who's telling the story? ;)
> 
> you can find me on twitter @citadelofswords crying about makolarry a whole bunch, also go wish alex spookyquark a happy birthday if it's still the day i published this


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